CAPE CANAVERAL - Columbia blasted
off 25 years ago today on NASA's first space shuttle mission. Seems like a
good time to roll out my own personal list of shuttle program superlatives. And
the winners are:

Best shuttle mission: STS-49 in May 1992. Three
spacewalking astronauts grabbed an 8,960-pound satellite with gloved hands after
two failed attempts to snare it with a $7 million capture bar. First flight of
Challenger replacement orbiter Endeavour. First drag chute landing.

Loneliest astronaut: Pierre Thuot, on the end of
Endeavour's robot arm during that same flight, watching the stranded satellite
tumble away from the shuttle after tapping it too hard, for the second time in
two days, with the capture bar.

Best shuttle bar: The Outpost near Johnson Space
Center in Houston. A shrine to shuttle astronauts.

Best shuttle crew: STS-27 in December 1988. Set to
fly a classified military mission, Robert "Hoot" Gibson and his crew
wore black masks to a preflight press conference. Asked by reporters about
their top-secret payload, Gibson said: "We could tell you, but then we'd
have to kill you."

Best answer in an
astronaut candidate job interview: Bill
Shepherd, first commander of the International Space Station. The U.S. Navy
SEAL was asked what he does best: "Kill people with a knife."

Best crew nicknames: STS-69 in September 1995. Known as
Dog Crew II, the group included the late Dave "Red Dog" Walker, Ken
"Cujo" Cockrell, Jim "Dog Face" Voss, Jim "Pluto"
Newman and Michael "Underdog" Gernhardt. The crew wore an alternate
mission patch that featured a bulldog peering out of a doghouse shaped like a
shuttle. They ate their preflight breakfast from dog bowls. Runner-up: Jean-Francois
"Billy-Bob" Clervoy.

Best crew walkout: STS-44 Terminal Countdown
Demonstration Test. For a launch-day dress rehearsal one day after Halloween in
1991, commander Fred Gregory and his crew wore hairless skullcaps as they
departed quarters. It was a tribute to bald crewmate Story Musgrave.

Greatest spacewalking
achievement: STS-61
in December 1993. An unprecedented five consecutive days of spacewalks were
performed to repair the
myopic Hubble Space Telescope and outfit the observatory with new science
instruments and equipment.

Scariest launch pad
abort: STS-41D in
1984. A fuel valve triggered an engine shutdown four seconds before a planned
launch, leading to a propellant leak and a fire with six astronauts aboard.

Scariest launch since
the 1986 Challenger disaster: STS-93 in 1999.
An electrical short crashed two engine computers five seconds after launch,
leaving the crew one failure away from a risky emergency landing attempt. Runner-up:
STS-114 in 2005. In a
haunting reminder of the 2003 Columbia accident, a one-pound piece of external
tank foam insulation broke
free two minutes after launch, barely missing the shuttle's right wing as the
ship climbed toward orbit.

Best bullet-dodger: Astronaut Mike Mullane.
The first case of solid rocket booster O-ring "blow-by" (which later
doomed Challenger) was recorded on his first flight, STS-41D in 1984. The most
serious shuttle heat shield damage prior to the Columbia accident was tallied
on his second, STS-27 in 1988.

The dreaded do-over
award: STS-73 in
1995. The flight was scrubbed six times before blasting off. Three earlier
missions (STS-61C, STS-35 and STS-36) each were delayed five times.

Most likely to be sent
back to crew quarters: Astronaut Steve Hawley. He endured 11 launch scrubs prior to his five
space flights.

Best all-astronaut rock
'n' roll band: Max
Q.

Worst all-astronaut rock
'n' roll band: Max
Q.

Best Elvis impersonator: Max Q lead singer Carl Walz.

Best sticks: Max Q drummer Jim Wetherbee.

Best stick: STS-49 Mission Commander Dan
Brandenstein. On the 1992 flight, Brandenstein squeezed enough gas out of
Endeavour's tanks to pull off a third rendezvous with a wayward spacecraft
after his crew failed to snare it during two initial attempts. Mission planners
had only budgeted enough propellant for two tries.

Best beer fund: STS-49. Brandenstein's crew was
fined during training for each uttered curse word. As things got hairy during
the mission, he reminded his crew over open communications loops: "The
Eagle Is Listening."

Best crew patch: STS-71 in 1995. Famed aviation and
space artist Robert
McCall designed the patch, which depicted Atlantis and the Russian space
station Mir converging before a rising sun. The sun symbolized the dawn of a
new era in space flight.

Best post-landing
picture: STS-43 in
1991. A supermarket tabloid published a doctored photo showing an alien exiting
the shuttle with the astronaut crew.

Most mysterious shuttle
manager: George
Abbey, former director of Flight Crew Operations. His process for selecting
astronaut crews: black magic.

Best shuttle-era Kennedy
Space Center director: Forrest McCartney, who led KSC through the tumultuous post-Challenger
recovery. McCartney was loved and respected on the fourth floor of KSC
headquarters and the shop floor. Runner-up: Jay Honeycutt. A great
manager and a really nice guy, he also understood the media's role in
"telling the NASA story."

Best shuttle launch director: Bob "Part-the-Clouds"
Sieck. A former Air Force meteorologist, Sieck's expertise in weather systems
and forecasting came in handy. Unflappable, the iceman also was the very
picture of grace under pressure.

Most accomplished KSC
manager: John J.
"Tip" Talone Jr. Talone was flow director for Discovery during the
post-Challenger recovery and oversaw the manufacture and delivery of
replacement orbiter Endeavour. Talone directed ground testing and processing
for International Space Station components before taking on his most recent
challenge: heading the effort to convert KSC back into a moonport.

Most likely to be an
astronaut: Stephanie
Stilson, who oversaw ground processing of Discovery for last year's first
post-Columbia flight.

Best International Space
Station construction crew: The STS-98
astronauts, who delivered
the U.S. Destiny
science lab to the ISS in February 2001.

Best 2-for-1 deal: STS-83 in 1997. One mission. Two
launches. Two landings. Led by Jim
Halsell, the crew cut short a science mission because of a failed fuel
cell. NASA launched the crew again in less than three months so their mission
(reconstituted as STS-94) could be completed.

Best space taxi driver: STS-71 Commander Robert
"Hoot" Gibson. He ferried
two Russian cosmonauts to the Mir station and returned to Earth with U.S.
astronaut Norman Thagard and two other cosmonauts in 1995.

Best shuttle homeboy: "Booster" Bill
Nelson. A native of Brevard County, Nelson's grandparents homesteaded on
land where NASA eventually built the Shuttle Landing
Facility. The politician-in-space flew aboard Columbia the mission before
the Challenger accident.

Best shuttle homegirl: Kay Hire, the first KSC engineer to
be selected as an astronaut. She flew on STS-90, a neuroscience mission, in
April 1998.

Best liftoff line: Launch Commentator Lisa Malone on STS-95
with John Glenn onboard in 1998. "Booster ignition and lift-off of
Discovery with a crew of six astronaut heroes and one American legend."

Most star-crossed
mission: STS-35 in
December 1990. Repeatedly delayed during a six-month period by diabolical fuel
leaks. Shuttle toilet broke in orbit.

Weirdest science
experiment: STS-58
in 1993, the headless rat mission. A guillotine-like "rodent
dispatcher" was used to "fix" rats in orbit as part of a life
sciences study.

Worst summer: 1990, also known as the "summer
of discontent." Within a period of about 72 hours, NASA announced the Hubble Space Telescope was launched
with a misshapen mirror and also grounded its shuttle fleet because of
mysterious fuel leaks.

Weirdest launch delay: STS-70 in 1995. Set to launch on
the historic 100th U.S. human space flight, the mission was delayed after
Yellow Shafted Flicker Woodpeckers drilled dozens of holes in external tank
foam insulation. The shuttle was returned to its assembly building for repairs.
The mission ultimately became the 101st U.S. human space flight.